The first was about the book’s genesis in a play she directed with her theater company in the same room where we were sitting. She read several chapters from the book, which is made up of a series of short essays. The moderator was not present due to COVID-19, so Khromeychuk was on the stage alone, in front of an audience of 30 guests. I attended the book launch for A Loss just before Christmas in the small theater in the back of the Calder Bookshop in London. She then spent years lecturing about war, her main lesson being that war is about humans, not tanks. Khromeychuk shares with readers the darkest and most intimate moments of any family experiencing such a tremendous loss.īorn in Ukraine, Khromeychuk moved to the United Kingdom as a student 20 years ago, where she completed a dissertation on the history of World War II in Ukraine at University College London. Though the book achieves Khromeychuk’s goal - to humanize the war in Ukraine for an English-speaking audience - it does so not through depictions of the war itself but through eloquent testimony of the author’s grief. OLESYA KHROMEYCHUK’S NEW BOOK, A Loss: The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister, is about her own brother, who died in 2017 fighting for Ukraine against Russian-backed forces. The following review was written before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |